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December 09, 2009

Prop 8 Foes Attack Expertise of 'Expert' Witnesses

From McGill’s site: Official mascot Marty the Martlet (also not qualified to testify about sociological ramifications of gay marriage).

A truckload (.pdf) of filings (.pdf) went online in the federal challenge to Proposition 8 over the last two days, and some begin to sketch out the evidence which will be in play at the January trial. Our favorite tidbit so far: Prop 8 opponents calling one of the other side’s experts a crackpot (.pdf).

The person in play is Dr. Katherine Young, a professor who agitates against gay marriage from a perch at McGill University in Montreal — an esteemed institution which, in addition to Young, has produced such benefits to society as organized hockey, CIA-financed mind control, and your faithful Legal Pad correspondent (Class of 1997). According to the same-sex marriage side, Prop 8 supporters want to call Young as an expert on what universally constitutes marriage and why.

But, anti-Prop 8 folks note, Young is an expert in … Hinduism.

Ted Olson lists the many, many things she's not an expert in, after the jump.

“Dr. Young is not an expert in sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, medicine, child development, statistics, survey construction and methodology or political science. She admits she has not submitted any articles for peer review in any relevant field,” wrote Gibson Dunn & Crutcher partner Ted Olson. “Indeed, her ‘expertise’ is far more narrow than the term ‘comparative religion’ might indicate. She considers herself an expert only in the field of religious studies, and then only in Hinduism.”

Thus Chief Judge Vaughn Walker shouldn’t certify Young as an expert, Olson wrote. The Gibson partner also targeted to other Yes on 8 experts, including Dr. Loren Marks, an associate professor at the College of Agriculture at Louisiana State University who is slated to testify about the benefits of biological marriage structures as ideal for child rearing. Yet Marks has never studied gay families, Olson notes.

“Dr. Marks does not have the experience or education necessary to make a determination on what type of family structure is ‘ideal’ for child outcomes,” Olson wrote. “His self-described areas of research interest include faith and families and African American families — discrete areas that hardly provide Dr. Marks an adequate foundation to opine on an ‘ideal structure’ for child outcomes.”